NZVWGrid news

Auckland U Portal ‘upgrades’

OpenSim hardware

Will host 30-50 sims

The water-driven sawmill on Avalon (akl.nzvwg.org.8002.Avalon 2)

The “virtual world team” at the University of Auckland will be “productionising” its Opensim installation – Hypergrid address: akl.nzvwg.org.8002.aotearoa – over the the next couple of weeks which should see the university’s portal on the New Zealand Virtual World Grid ready to accept more tertiary institutions.

Announcing the move, Dr Scott Diener (SL: Professor Noarlunga), the Associate Director, IT Services, at the University of Auckland, said the university would now have separate servers for Development, Test and Production.

“The system will have four grunty production servers, which should host 30-50 sims, along with a separate database server for it all,” Dr Diener said. This would add further stability to the user experience on the opensource OpenSim Version 7, HG 1.5 portal, he added/

The Auckland Portal now has voice working with Freeswitch, but the team is investigating licenses for Vivox as well. It also is investigating the use of the Havok physics engine which when and if implemented should further enhance the NZVWGrid experience, making it near if not eqaul to the Second Life experience.

Dr Diener said it planned to subdivide sims and “sell for $0 of course” the parcels to individuals on the Auckland portal, which already includes Auckland University and Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology sites as well as a SLENZ site which will include the SLENZ Project builds from Second Life. There are also plans for a Virtual Life Education New Zealand entry point.

The gateway point for Auckland Portal will become the Aotearoa sim which also includes a Hypergate point to the hundreds of virtual world OpenSim grids already mounted around the world.

Scott Diener, on Aotearoa, with Combat System sword

Dr Diener has written a gaming system that includes a battle meter and weapons scripts that works well in Second Life (0n sale at Academe), and appears to work in the Opensim environment “….not great…but okay,” he said.

“I will be refining that as well, and intend to use it with some of the projects I laid out last year (eg involvement in the Life Games Project), he said, adding he was seeking other interested participants for this project.

Meanwhile the SLENZ project developer and wellknown Second Life builder, Aaron Griffiths (SL: Isa Goodman) has been given a commission to build some facilities for the University of Otago on the Otago portal (www. nzvwg.org) and he has also secured design work with the Manukau Institute of Technology, an orginal participant in the SLENZ Project, which is still determining whether to go with Second Life, JokadyiaGrid or the NZVWGrid for its current year foundation education work.

At

Academe in SL ... where the Falcon gaming system was developed and is on sale. The Falcon system sale site in SL pictured above.

New Zealand MUVE activity

NMIT launches course covering

3d immersive environments

Class of 2010: The first NMIT class in 3d immersive environments.

The Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology has successfully launched and is into the fourth week of an online course on multi-user three dimensional virtual environments (MUVEs) and their relationships to other multi-user technologies.

The 16 students, enrolled in the course (A&M624, Immersive 3D Environments), based on the NMIT Second Life islands of Koru and Kowhai, are being tutored on-campus by Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust) and online by former SLENZ developer and New Zealand’s most experienced virtual world builder, Aaron Griffiths (SL: Isa Goodman).

Dr Clare Atkins

The course has been designed to develop knowledge and understanding of using current generation commercial software as well as providing in-depth knowledge of specialised processes, techniques and media, according to Dr Atkins.

While the course includes explorations of other virtual environments, most of the classes focus on the use of Second Life.

The course will take 60 hours class time, with at least half the classes in a virtual world, mainly Second Life.

Dr Atkins and Griffiths are known in New Zealand for creating and championing the successful $NZ500,00 Second Life Education New Zealand (SLENZ) Project, which over an 18-month period created and established two pilot education programmes, one with Otago Polytechnic in midwifery, and the other in Foundation (Bridging) Learning with Manakau Institute of Technology. The Foundation Learning course, under the leadership of MIT lecturer Merle Lemon (SL: Briarmelle Quintessa), has now become a permanent course within the MIT structure, with a large number of students participating in it. Otago Polytechnic, however, decided at the conclusion of the pilot programme not to take the midwifery course any further.

Aaron Griffiths

Commenting on the first couple of NMIT classes Griffiths said that although the students had appeared reluctant at first they had quickly realised the potential (of Second Life) “… that it’s more than a game” with the student blogs starting to show their realisation of this.

” I am well pleased with this class…. most seem committed to learning ,” he said. “Building is slow, of course(and its) a HUGE step for many of them. I guess I am rather passionate about these environment … hopefully that rubs off on some.”

” The hardest part really is the limited time I have with them … (there is) one hell of a lot to get across in such short spaces of time.”

Griffiths and Atkins are detailing the class’ activities in a blog, Immersive 3d environments, which also links into the student blogs: this blog gives an interesting glimpse into how the lessons are constructed and are proceeding as well as student reactions.

SLENZ PROJECT DOES IT AGAIN

Midwifery Studies Build 1.0

available free to public

Much of the SLENZ birth unit featured in this PookyMedia

machinima has been made available free of charge.

The SLENZ Project announced today that its Midwifery Studies Build Version 1.0, is now available for free pickup from the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) Second Life island of Kowhai.

The build is being made available by NMIT, which ran the the New Zealand Government-funded SLENZ Project, under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License 3.0.

The Midwifery Studies Build is the second to be made available to the public. The project has previously made its Foundation (Bridging) Learning Build available under the same criteria.

The packaging of the builds marks the culmination of the 18-month, $NZ500,000 SLENZ Project, the team members of which have now launched Virtual Life Education New Zealand to continue their research as well as to provide advice to virtual world users.

Call for “sharing, collaboration”

“Making the midwifery build available to the public means that the final deliverable for the SLENZ Project is now done,” SLENZ Project joint leader Terry Neal said.

In another sense, however, she said, it is just the beginning.”

The team was thrilled that scores of people had picked up the Foundation Build and hoped that the interest in the Midwifery Build would be similar. “Our dream is that learners all around the world can benefit from what we have done,” she said. “We also hope that others will imitate us in making what they develop freely available.

“Development in virtual worlds is not cheap and the more we can share rather than duplicating our efforts, the more we will have available for all of us.”

Neal said she would love to see educators all over the world focusing on “how we can design, develop and use virtual environments to significantly improve how all people learn, rather than creating builds for ourselves and locking them away.

“The cost is in creating not sharing,” she said. “However, I know people have to make a living and organisations vary in their commitment to a more sharing approach.”

Neal paid tribute to the Tertiary Education Commission and Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology for their commitment “to sharing so generously”.

The Midwifery Studies Build (791 prims) contains all the items required for the Normal Birth Scenario developed by the SLENZ team for the SLENZ Project midwifery pilot, including the birthing room, midwives’ office, treatment room and outdoor courtyard. Ceilings on the rooms have been removed to facilitate camera access. The SLENZ Midwifery Studies Resource Pack includes the SLENZ Mother Controller (HUDs created by SLENZ Developer Todd Cochrane (SL: Toddles Lightworker).
All package items are full permissions.

The Birthing Unit build, now available free.

The items are provided inside a 24 x 40 metre megaprim base (SLENZ Midwifery Studies Rez Base) and can be rezzed from this base once it is positioned.

Griffiths plans to hold technical discussions which will focus on a users’ first interaction with the Foundation Studies and Midwifery Builds. It will look at the scripts used to welcome users and offer them introductory information.

He is available for help with the builds and would appreciate feedback [debnaar@clear.net.nz]. Griffiths is currently investigating the production of OAR files for both builds so they can be used in alternative OpenSim environments.

The Midwifery pilot was conducted in conjunction with Otago Polytechnic and Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT). Midwife Sarah Stewart (SL: Petal Stransky) was the Lead educator on the project.

VLENZ PROJECT

Steering Committee named

for new VLENZ Group

A new steering committee, which includes some of New Zealand’s leading virtual world researchers and educators, has been named to head the Virtual Life Education New Zealand (VLENZ) group, formed after the finish of SLENZ Project.

The new leadership group is: Dr Clare Atkins, of Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology, Terry Neal, of BlendedSolutions, Dr Scott Diener, of the University of Auckland, Merle Lemon, of Manakau Institute of Technology, and Aaron Griffiths, of Fxual Education Services.

Dr Atkins and Terry Neal (pictured top right and left) were joint leaders of the NZ$500,000 Government-funded SLENZ Project; Dr Diener(pictured middle right), the Associate Director, IT Services (Academic & Collaborative Technologies) at the University of Auckland, has led the development of the University of Auckland’s much-lauded medical simulation project in Second Life, is active in many international groups related to the use of virtual worlds in higher education, and is a key player in the New Zealand Virtual World Grid (NZVWG); Lemon (bottom left), an MIT lecturer, was a Lead Educator (Foundation (Bridging) Learning) for the SLENZ Project; Griffiths (bottom right) ,the founder of Fxual Education Services, was the Lead developer for the SLENZ Project. Atkins and Griffiths initiated the SLENZ Project two years ago.

The VLENZ meeting early last week, which set up the steering committee, agreed to the VLENZ name for the group,which will be a consortium of

individuals rather than institutions. It currently has 32 members drawn from education and virtual world research across New Zealand.

It will continue with this blog at slenz.wordpress.com, as well as becoming a sub-domain of the previously registered edumuve.ac.nz domain as vlenz.edumuve.ac.nz. It has a Second Life Group called VLENZ as well as a google group under the same name.

It is likely that the formal group will operate as a non-profit trust although this has not yet been finalised.

The group’s purpose and objectives are to be discussed at meeting on the NMIT Second Life island of Koru at 10 am on Monday, Feb 8 (New Zealand time), with the objective of finalising the group’s mission statement and initial goals.

THE SLENZ WORKSHOPS AT Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009

Five lessons from the creation of

education pilots in Second Life

SL’s Arwenna Stardust and RL’s Dr Clare Atkins make a point.

The five SLENZ Project workshops attended by mainstream tertiary educators at the annual, national Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009 conference, at UCOL, Palmerston North, New Zealand, last week, provided some valuable tips for the administration and creation of virtual world education.

I thought the lessons important enough to provide summaries of some of them for educators and administrators who could not attend the conference. The first summary is below.

The SLENZ Project team members who presented at the conference included, SLENZ Project co leaders, Dr Clare Atkins and Terry Neal; Merle Lemon, lead educator for the foundation learning pilot at Manukau Institute of Technology, and Oriel Kelly, manager of MIT’s Learning Environment Support Technology Centre; Lead developer, Aaron Griffiths, of F/Xual Education Services; and Todd Cochrane, a SLENZ developer and lecturer at WelTec.

Funding for the SLENZ Project was provided by the Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand, a Government body.

1. “Working effectively in a virtual team”

The core team was made up of two parts: students, educators, learning designer, Project Leader Second Life, (Atkins) and the developers, in one box, and the evaluator, communications and Project Leader Real Life (Neal) in the other. Although theoretically all the roles were to have worked together in practice they overlapped.

The core team was supported by a project administrator, literature reviewer, web developer, other educators (10), IT support (4), video makers (2), the steering group (9) and the friends of the project who sometimes attended meetings on the Second Life island of Koru or provided advice via email or other means.

Forming: The creation of the project evolved out of Dr Clare Atkin’s network through one-to-one phone conversations, the formulation of a Project Execution Plan and a face-to-face meeting at which modifications were made. Those modifications included the addition of a communications role. In Second Life the “forming* of the SLENZ Project included the creation of avatars, support for newbie players on the team and the formulation of agreed meeting protocols.

Storming: The design and development phases of the project included a process to agree process, the agreement on process, open versus closed interaction, the learning design – considering access or focus on in-world experience, and discussion of the implications of creative commons licence, which will eventually lead to the team’s Second Life work and builds being made freely available with full permissions.

Norming: Communication and problem solving was done through weekly in-world team meetings on the island of Koru, weekly Skype calls by Neal, weekly development team meetings led by Atkins, a weekly catchup/review by Atkins and Neal, and the provision of publicly available documentation through all stages of the project.

Performing: The project proceeded with the ongoing use of established processes, celebration of milestones and achievements – something often missing in virtual projects – and the linking in of educators, through the lead educator in each of the pilots, and the linking in of the evaluator by Neal. Extra team roles were developed with the appointment of a web developer and video developers.

Adjourning ( or the winding down and completion of the project): A final face-to-face team meeting will be held, with the team sharing what it can over the final three months to the winding up and clear finish.

Keys to success: According to both Atkins and Neal the keys to the success of the Project were/are: the establishment of a clear prupose, clear roles, the use of multiple communications methods, including a variety of online tools and text and voice communication; dual project leadership, and constant monitoring of the progress and well-being of the team.

Next blog: MUVEing towards collaboration – the benefits and pitfalls of working as a collaborative teaching in a Multi-user Virtual Environment,” and “In-world, meets the real world – the trials and tribulations of bringing Second Life to an ITP,” presented by Merle Lemon, lead educator in foundation learning, and lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology and Oriel Kelly also of MIT.

eFest unconference workshop demos

SLENZ co-leader Terry Neal (right) gives an

unscheduled demonstration of SLGriffiths points out a detail to a polytech lecturer.

THE SLENZ PROJECT

SLENZ teams finds new ‘acceptance,

enthusiasm’ at education gabfest

… Need seen to retain team skills, post-SLENZ Project

Almost full house … Aaron Griffiths details a Developer’s work.

as the SLENZ Lead Developer/builder.

Growing “acceptance” of Second Life as an education medium and a new “enthusiasm” for virtual world education was demonstrated in Palmerston North, New Zealand, last week by the number of mainstream tertiary educators who attended five SLENZ team workshops at the annual, national Teaching and Learning/eFest 2009 conference .

The growing interest in virtual worlds also was demonstrated in an unscheduled, eFest unconference workshop before the conference proper and the fact that the eight members of the SLENZ team who attended the conference were constantly pulled aside by attendees, wanting to learn more about virtual world education or wanting to know how to become actively involved.

It was the third annual mainstream conference at which the SLENZ Project has been promoted but its acceptance was very different from previous outings.

As Lead developer Aaron Griffiths (pictured) (SL: Isa Goodman), of F/Xual Education Services, said, “It was like a coming of age. At the first two conferences we could only tell them what it could be like. With this conference we really had something to show them. We could show that education in virtual worlds can work and be both economic and effective.”

The success was such that a number of educators attending the workshops and in private conversations later suggested that the SLENZ Team, due to complete the SLENZ Programme by year end, should be retained so that the skills learned and honed on the project would not be lost to the New Zealand education community. The suggestion was even made that the project should be set up on a permanent, collaborative basis with funding from New Zealand tertiary institutions who wished to employ the team’s skills in setting up their own virtual education units.

Commenting on this, SLENZ Project joint co-leader, Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust), of NMIT, said it made sense for New Zealand’s tertiary institutions, and particularly its Polytechnics to co-operate and work collaboratively in virtual worlds, rather than individually. In that way they could make effective, economic use of the available advice, skills and lessons already learned as well as ensuring that each was not going through the costly exercise of trying to reinvent the wheel, independently.

After the conference, co-leader, Terry Neal (SL: Tere Tinkel), of Blended Solutions, said that the Project would consider setting up a virtual world roadshow for those Polytechnic educators and administrators who had expressed interest in learning more about education in Second Life and other virtual worlds.

The Polytechnic educators at the four-day conference at UCOL who appeared most interested in virtual world education for their students included those involved in nursing and paramedic training, anatomy and physiology lecturing, foundation (bridging) learning, trade and industry training and agriculture, including viticulture, all areas which the SLENZ team has worked in or has looked at working in.

Dr Clare Atkins and Terry Neal .. working effectively in a virtual team.

The SLENZ Project team members who presented at the conference included, Dr Atkins and Terry Neal; Merle Lemon (SL: Briarmelle Quintessa), lead educator for the foundation learning pilot at Manukau Institute of Technology, and Oriel Kelly, manager of MIT’s Learning Environment Support Technology Centre; Aaron Griffiths; and Todd Cochrane (SL: Toddles Lightworker), a SLENZ developer and lecturer at WelTec.

The SLENZ workshops, which will be the subject of a separate posting, looked at, “Working effectively in a virtual team,” “3D as an everyday medium for teaching, ” “MUVEing towards collaboration – the benefits and pitfalls of working as a collaborative teaching in a Multiuser Virtual Environment”, “In-world, meets the real world – the trials and tribulations of bringing Second Life to an ITP, “From Real World to Virtual: Actualising Virtual World Education.

Lest we forget unsung heroes …

Design and building in Second

Life really is hard ‘yakka*’

… an ‘Oscar’ for Isa/Aaron?

Isa Goodman (aka Aaron Griffiths), Second Life builder

It’s easy to forget that the often unsung heroes of virtual worlds are the builders – the on-the-virtual-ground developers, scripters, animators but especially the builders.

As educators it should be easy for us to specify what we want – after all we’ve generally been giving similar lessons in real life – but then it is much more difficult for the developer-builder to turn one’s dreams into reality, especially if those dreams are just pie-in-the-sky impossibilities, conjured up by people with little experience or “immersion” in virtual worlds.

However, the kudos for turning “impossible dreams” into some sort of reality, more often than not, goes to the publicity-conscious academics leading a programme rather than the builders and developers who toil, mostly anonymously, behind their screens, trying to meet impossible time and financial constraints, and who are then forgotten in the praise heaped on the successful project promoters.

All educators, before they embark on the design of a learning opportunity in a virtual world, should clearly understand that content creation and development in virtual worlds is hard “yakka*”. They also should not forget that praise should go to the builder if a design works. The builders know only too well that if a project fails, they, the builders, will be blamed by the academics for its failure.

In the beginning…

Unlike the academics, however, most top-notch builders I have met have been loath to accept written praise or credit despite the fact that their livelihood often depends on them getting on-going work in virtual worlds.

In the SLENZ Project we have one top-notch builder, Aaron Griffths (SL: Isa Goodman), of F/Xual Education Services (email: debnaar@clear dot net dot nz), who is the Lead Developer “genius” who has created the SLENZ Project’s foundation learning and midwifery pilot builds, scripts, textures, animations etc from what initially were little more than fuzzy ideas. Aided by developers/builders NMIT’s Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust), who doubles as the SLENZ Project’s co leader, and WelTech’s Todd Cochrane (SL: Toddles Lightworker) Aaron has created from scratch the builds which you can see on Kowhai today, on time and on budget.

But let him tell you himself what it was like, even though I believe he would not want the limelight. Fortunately he has he described how it is in a letter to Metaverse Health, which in its otherwise well-intentioned and fulsome article on the SLENZ Project’s Midwifery Pilot promotional machinima, unfortunately gave no credits to the SLENZ Project builders.

Answering criticism in a comment on the article, that a partner was not present in the midwifery birthing machinima, Aaron noted it had been intended to have a partner present but this had been finally precluded by having to meet deadlines and budget constraints.

“Unfortunately in the end to meet the deadlines set by the fact the students were coming into the build on a specific date, the scripting, animations and building required to have a partner (of whatever gender) present in the scenarios just did not happen,” he said, before going on to describe the build and the work involved.

“This (midwifery build) was a very complex build designed out of very little in terms of actual specifics, reassessed and recreated on an ongoing basis through discussion with the educators,” he said, by way of explanation. “The build was divided into stages so that at least, even if the ideal could not be developed within the budgeted hours, we would have finished stages at points throughout the process which could be considered complete resources.

The finished Birth Centre … interior.

“Stage one therefore gave us the actual unit, created as an immersive experience of an “ideal birthing unit” complete with notecards and links out to information supporting the theory associated with the design.

“Stage two (which we have reached) … steps the midwife through a normal birthing process in terms of her interactions with the mother from the first phone call into the unit through to the actual birth.

“The scenario goes beyond a simple role play of mother and midwife to include the numerous clinical requirements of the process such as blood pressure and temperature readings, preparation of medical equipment and medications, good practice requirements, e.g. use of sterile gloves in examination, washing of hands etc.

“Stage three was intended to extend the scenarios to include not only a partner (or whanau depending on ethnic considerations) but more difficult births such as postpartum hemorrhage, i.e. birth scenarios typically not experienced by midwifery trainees.

“… deadlines and budget restrictions (read as we used it all up by the end of stage two – 300 hours for the Birth Centre build) have meant that further developments will not happen under this project’s funding.” he said. “That is not to say they wont happen. As the resources provided are Creative Commons they will be packaged with as much instruction as I have time to develop so that others may carry on taking the scenarios further.”

Finally to put some perspective on the task Aaron has completed with the midwifery pilot (all originals to allow for full permissions under a Creative Commons license) the build now has more than 2600 objects, more than 250 scripts, not including HUDs worn by the mother and midwife, 16 animations and poses, and more than 100 textures.

If there are Oscars for the creation of virtual world education builds, Aaron should be in line to get one for his midwifery pilot, if not for both his midwifery and foundation learning builds.

DISCLAIMER

The Virtual Life Education New Zealand (VLENZ) blog (slenz.wordpress.com) is designed to provide an independent view of progress and technological/social developments in MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments) in New Zealand and around the world with an emphasis on education.
The blog is based on the personal experiences of and observations concerning MUVEs and MORPGs of the editor, John Waugh (SL: Johnnie Wendt) and,
from time-to-time, guest editors/writers'. As a result it may not reflect the views of the VLENZ Group, individual VLENZ members and/or the Group's leadership, and/or the various tertiary institutions and other organisations connected to it, either directly or indirectly. The views expressed and posted are completely those of the named author of each article unless otherwise stated.
Second Life® and Linden Lab® are registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. No infringement is intended.